Revenge Has a Curse
by Mewdu
Summary: "So the curse is in reverse. How interesting!" Yuki snapped the pad of paper from Shigure's hand. Hatori nodded. "But who's next?" Yuki asked. Then the door slammed open, revealing the feline face of Kyo and a red cheeked Tohru. "I withdraw my question."
1. Chapter 1

**Well, here I am again about to launch myself noobily into another fandom archive. It can't be helped, I suppose. Fruits Basket crack pairings are too tempting to let set and die off. So very tempting...Ah, well. You canon-vets will just have to either ignore my existence entirely or take a ride on the dark side. Kyo and Tohru are perfect for each other...yes, they are undeniably adorable. But Haru...I had to. I really had to, didn't I? Man, what the heck am I doing? I suppose anyone who bothers to read past this prologue will discover the answer to this question along with me, eh? Come to think of it, does anyone actually read author's notes anymore, even if they are uselessly rambling ones as I am demonstrating now? I'm kind of curious if I remain the sole fanficker who read AN's.**

**DISCLAIMER: I will only say this once. I am an adnormal teenager who writes fictions for stories made by someone amazing and not me. I own absolutely nothing. **

**Moving on, I hope I can entertain you through the whole page, if only for a sentence before you rage quit-click my story for the plot that's revealed in chapter 1. Hmm. I wonder if anyone bothered to read this far?**

**NOTE: This continues from volume 23, before the last seven pages of volume 23, I believe, for those precise people. Just before that is where I'm continuing from. Okay. Anything else that pops up I'll probably explain in chapter 1. So...**

**ONWARD.**

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**************Prologue**_****__****__********__:_

_****__****__********__Revenge Has a Curse__****__****__**

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_**Life**_ _**meant nothing**_ _**without her.**_

He could so easily believe those words. Disappear into the dark and withhold all breath. Haru quirked a surely black brow at the thought then clicked the trigger of a lighter he'd never used. Rin would have slapped the sight of him bloodily bruised with a cigarette between his purple knuckles, unlit and torn in two from a twisted hold. Alone and reigning king within the alley, Haru was sure Rin would have left her mark and run. She had known him well enough not to stick around for the after shock that erupted within him from a terribly pleasing crash of pain.

It had all changed within a few months. When that girl, Tohru, had rained down upon them all. Pain within their cursed world had been frequent, routinely so as they all danced to the whim of 'God'. But she had offered unabashed comfort in the form of words and her pure existence. Haru blinked once at the crackle of a footstep against gravel.

Rin and Tohru. The beautiful girl with fire in her eyes and the one who could extinguish such a flame. Opposites and parallels just the same. Haru had wholly understood Rin's fascination and dared to hate it before becoming enticed by the purity of their little savior once or twice, and dared for a third. Perhaps a mistake.

"...Haru...?"

His eyes lifted slowly upon the face of the pretty little girl who'd broken the curse. Haru smiled slowly and threw out a hand to welcome her to the home that was his. His cursed world. The tips of his fingers swept her cheek and she flinched back in surprise. "Welcome, Tohru Honda. Sit awhile."

"No." She shook her head furiously and touched his shoulder, checking worriedly at her back. She pulled at his sleeve. "You're hurt, Haru." She turned his face as he began to slouch. The brown eyes he met were sad. "You need help..."

Haru touched her hands gently and brought them to his face. Tohru watched him in silence, her lips parted slightly and her breath hot against his cheeks. He closed his eyes and saw Rin's fire in the place of Tohru's innocence. Her hands were cold as Tohru's were warm. Her hair the black in her heart while Tohru's shade was comparable to the sweet of honey. His eyes slid open. "Something you would never do," he said quietly.

He fell forward into her embrace before the question graced her breath. She gasped as his mind twisted into the curse of his birthright. His limps became long as his coat grew coarse. Haru fell to the darkness he'd feared of and grasped for, and all that haunted him was the vision of her face. Pale and dead.

_**Hate me.**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Blah blah blah-need to do this so I can put the line below it.**

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**C****hapter One****:**

_**Beginning**_

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_**-**_**O**_**-**_**O-**

"_If I died, would you kill yourself for me?"_

"_Yes."_

"_How stupid. Only a fool would kill himself for a woman."_

_Haru smiled quietly and kissed her still face._

"_Yes. But it is really the woman falling for the stupid fool that kills them both."_

_Rin looked up at the lips that hovered above her own._

"_A fool shouldn't twist a woman's words."_

"_Ah. But I thought the woman was dead."_

_Rin tugged at his necklace lightly to bring him closer._

"_Promise."_

"_Hmm."_

_She whispered against his ear._

"…_haru__."_

_**Never die for me.**_

_**-**_**O**_**-**_**O-**

"Where is he?" Hatori shrugged off his coat, immediately taking note that Shigure had sprawled himself comfortably upon his living room couch. He withheld the reactive sigh anyone else would release at the sight of a man in their home without knowledge of the key hidden underneath the plant holder balanced on his windowsill and without the second possession of said set of keys. "This house is too big. I cannot seem to place the location of our little reborn Ox.." Hatori calmly hung the coat in the broom closet and stepped quietly up to Shigure, removing the medical record laid along his face.

"This is not a house. It is my apartment." He smoothed the creased pages without a word and set it on the surface of the coffee table. "He's currently asleep in the guest bedroom in back. And I hope you would refrain from agitating me further by spying on him," he said just as Shigure had reached the film door trapping him between a prowling satiated curiosity and a questionable man who spared no answers.

Shigure regarded him with an easy smile that sent racing chills down Hatori's spine. "Would it be inappropriate if I told you that you know me too well?"

"Anything from your mouth would be inappropriate," he answered, his lips a thin line.

"Oh, well." Shigure sighed gustily and plopped down onto the couch again, spreading his arms and legs so far to make it an impossibility of access to be allowed for a second party. The seconds of silence passed in ignorance of Hatori's tangible annoyance until Shigure turned his head up at the irritated man, who had resigned himself to a book. "When is Yun-yun supposed to be here? I'm surprised he's so late."

"Not late," Hatori replied with a quick snap of his book closing. "You're just early."

Shigure's lips twitched in amusement, then frolicked into a grin when the doorbell rang. "Don't trouble yourself. I'll fetch it." Shigure sprang up, greeting the solemn pale face of Yuki with open arms. "Yun-yun, it has been _ages_," he exclaimed, stepping forward into a pit of comforting empty air when Yuki stepped aside, greeting Hatori with a small nod.

"Hatori, it has been awhile," he said, blatantly ignoring Shirgure fanning faux tears behind him. He set his school bag down alongside his shoes then stepped up into the hall, peering around with placid eyes. "Where are Kyo and Tohru? Figures he can manage to be late."

"Not here yet," Hatori replied simply. "It's still ten minutes to five."

Yuki looked down at his feet and cleared his throat. "I see, well then I'll–"

"Your secret lover is waiting for you in back. Shame, shame, Yuki. I wonder how your pretty lady friend would react–"

Hatori had slapped a thick manual over Shigure's poised face, earning a disgruntled groan from the deserving receiver and a smirk from Yuki. "He's in back, if you would like to see him."

Yuki's smile fell slack, his dark eyes skittering to the floor. "No," he said slowly. His eyes met Hatori's gaze. "I'll talk to him when he's awake. You said he went black, didn't you? It would be best to wait till he's conscious."

Hatori paused, looking away. He reached into his pants pocket, tipping out the contents of the plastic bag into his open palm. "Miss Honda was distraught when she led me to Haru's transformed state. At this point, I will assume the change came from exhaustion. There had been a cut on his side." He held out the item for Yuki to observe. "She said he was holding this before he transformed."

Yuki only glanced once. "Rin." Hatori watched him pocket the necklace without a word. "Are the others coming?"

The sudden rustling of pages distracted the attention of both reasonable men toward Shigure, who had sat himself in the leather chair that accompanied the lone couch. "Kagura's busy with night classes but swore to make the late transit. Ritsu's battling the pros and cons of abandoning his first date and being here with Haru-quite whole heartedly of course before the machine cut him off. And I believe Hiro spoke on behalf of Kisa and himself that they couldn't make it on a school night, but would meet at the main house tomorrow evening. Mayu called as well. She asked if you were finished with 'the tape' yet." Shigure turned the page of the newspaper so he was in the sports section. "It's preposterous how many messages you neglected to receive–oh, _damn_. There's a two grand I wasted lying about. But I did give him Aya's address..."

"No," Hatori answered without facing away from Shigure. "I suppose not."

"Oh, how boring." Shigure sighed and began to fold the newspaper into an unnatural shape that included a beak and tail. "Without the family here, entertainment is far to appear. Not that I'm leaving you out, Yun-yun."

"I will hit you."

"And even Momiji has abandoned me to a plight of unease for another day. Forgotten, washed up, _old_," Shigure said tonelessly, then clapped his hands together so loudly Yuki jolted. "Well then, the three of us can crack this together. The brilliant novelist father, mother of said novelist, and their son."

Yuki's eyebrows raised just the bit at a portion of Shigure's melodramatic complaint, completely ignoring the insult. "Momiji's taking the train from Tokyo for Haru?"

"Unfortunately, that's only one of the reasons," Hatori answered. His gaze didn't retreat from Shigure until he finally cleared his throat and turned to face Yuki. "On the phone I left out particular details until the family could be summoned together. But Momiji caught on quickly. He'd heard about Haru through Tohru. She had described the experience as 'unexplainable'."

Yuki closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. His lips turned white when he pursed them. He ran a hand through his hair slowly, and sighed quietly. "But how is that possible?"

"Logically, it is impossible." Hatori looked away from Yuki and at Shigure. "Akito felt nothing when Haru had reestablished the connection with his curse."

"Are you saying someone else has become God?" Yuki asked. Hatori didn't look at him. An answer lay dead in the air.

Shigure chuckled softly. "So the curse is reversed? How interesting." He leaned his head back to rest on the arm of the couch, eyes lazily focused on the ceiling. "I should write a book," he mumbled.

"You're _retired_," Yuki reminded him absently. His purple eyes leveled with Hatori, who had become silent among Shigure's melancholy words. He blinked once then met Yuki's steady gaze.

"No Sohma has shown any signs of retaining such a dominant nature, not since Akito." Hatori fell quiet with a deep frown on his lips. "But if the curse truly has returned, then we can only wait and be cautious of the possibility for a second…incident," he said after a pause, the grimace on his face a reaction from the obvious contradiction of his words.

"Second," Yuki whispered to himself. He met Hatori's solemn expression in a indistinct panic. He curled his hands and took a calming breath. "It's a sequence?"

Hatori faced away from Yuki, watching Shigure in a silence that reminded Yuki of earlier days, when the main house had been full of secrets. The world of adults had been so far away as a child, but now he could no longer shield himself. "Hatori," he quietly interjected between the men's unspoken words. "Who's next?"

Hatori paused, watching Yuki strangely with his dark eyes. His lips then parted for an answer Yuki nearly did not want to know. "Y-"

The wooden door burst apart, the following loud clang disrupting the peace of its quaking hinges. The three men were all startled into the red face of a gasping Tohru. Yuki's face lit up into a familiar smile of greeting until his gaze located the twitching cheeks of an orange feline encased in her arms, his human cloths curved into a pile at her elbow allowing them to witness the puzzling evidence of the cat's transformation.

Yuki sighed when he met the slanted and clearly angry eyes of Kyo. "I withdraw my question."

_**-**_**O**_**-**_**O-**

Yuki desperately ached to slam his fist into Shigure's face as said man grinned shamelessly at Tohru, who could only look down at her knees as her innocent mind was questioned the unspeakable.

"I, uh-well, Shigure. We were-um," she stuttered, her pale cheeks stained red at the thought of what Shigure wanted to hear confessed from her lips. She looked up at them, her small frame on the verge of collapse. "We…hugged?" she finally managed, her words a tiny squeak.

"And then-"

Yuki smacked the backside of Shigure's head, ignoring the sharp, "ow!" that snatched up Tohru's concern like a fly to honey. "Tohru," Yuki tried. She faced him reluctantly, her brown eyes darting to the injured Shigure who dramatically nursed his wound with distant cries of anguish at Yuki's side. She brushed back a lock of her dark hair, and Yuki distantly noticed she had cut it to shape just below her shoulders. _Has it really been so long?_

"Yes, Yuki?" she asked, peering at him curiously, her head titled to the side. He smiled.

"So you and Kyo…embraced."

Her face instantly heated up, the atmosphere dissolving between them as if he'd flipped the switch with his words. She put her hands up and waved them around as if to ward off his accusations. "I tripped down the stairs and Kyo caught me!" She looked down at her hands, twirling the white and black bracelet quietly. "That was all that happened."

Yuki watched her twisting hands, unable to say what would comfort her most as he witnessed her stumble around in the dark for answers. _Everything will be okay, _pulsed painfully in reaction on his thoughts. But he could not utter it, not when Kyo had transformed in front of her eyes. Yuki grit his teeth, envisioning what she must have felt at that moment, sitting helpless without the reassurance that he would change back without morphing into something else entirely.

"Kyo, you disgrace of a man," Shigure sighed, fan at his smile-lined lips. "Not even able to hold a young lady in need. I suppose I'll have to be the substitute then-"

Shigure's face went white, his pain escaping through his thin grin as he stood, revealing a set of peculiar red dots in the shape of claw marks at his calf. "Don't you worry," he said tightly, making his way toward the bathroom. "Father is merely stepping out for a moment."

Kyo leapt up into Shigure's vacated spot on the couch, stretching his orange limbs beside a wryly amused Yuki.

"Can you not refrain yourself from solving every situation with violence?"

Kyo shot him an irritable glare from below, obviously frustrated with the fact that Yuki was in a secure position to manhandle his feline state as he merely resigned himself to sit in a brooding silence. His ears went flat to his head.

"You would have if it were Machi he was talking about," he mumbled. Yuki froze at the sickening thought, turning away when he heard the distinct 'pop' of the curse releasing its hold. Tohru leapt up, slipping the bracelet into place around his wrist. She sighed in relief, throwing her arms around Kyo's neck.

"Tohru," Kyo managed through clenched teeth.

She looked up at him, her smile easy before she went as rigid as Kyo, dropping her arms and covering her eyes before darting behind the couch as she stuttered a flurry of erratic apologies.

"Cloths are in the back room," Hatori said in reply to Kyo's bare bodied state. Yuki crossed his arms over his chest, attempting not laugh as Kyo made a beeline for the paper door that separated the rooms. He smiled easily when Kyo's exit was marked by a swift click.

"Tohru." Yuki remained still as he heard Tohru shift behind the couch. "He's gone. You can come out now."

Her head slowly rose above the curve of the trim hesitantly, her brown eyes peaking over meekly. A loud sigh parted her lips when she witnessed Yuki's words as truth. She stood fully, placing herself beside Yuki cautiously. Her cheeks were still pink by the time Shigure returned.

He had changed himself into a separate blue yukata, peering between the obviously embarrassed Tohru and curiously emotionless Yuki with a titled black brow. "Where's Kyo? I'd like to have the pleasure of petting him," he said coldly, his face frigidly calm.

"He's changing," Yuki replied.

As if stimulated by this, the thin paper door between Hatori's living and entertaining sections burst apart, Kyo the culprit. He lay on his back, with Haru's fingers curled tightly around his neck. Tohru leapt to her feet, hands reaching out to touch before Hatori stepped in front of her.

Haru's normally docile face was twisted into an ugly sneer at the writhing Kyo underneath. He pushed his knee into his ribs, Kyo gasping as he clawed at the hold on his neck. "Getting rid of you is doing the world a favor, you damned cat!"

Yuki tackled Haru from behind, Tohru running to Kyo's side.

Yuki's hold slipped easily from Haru's bare back when he tired to break away. Haru turned on him, his eyes alighting darkly at the sight of his attacker. His black façade slipped away for the briefest moment. "Turning on me too, Yuki?" he bitterly questioned. Yuki raised his fist, closing his eyes when the hit knocked Haru cold.

When Yuki faced them, Kyo was sitting up, Tohru nervously inquiring about him as Hatori mutely slipped his stethoscope back into his medical bag. "He's fine," Hatori curtly replied to Tohru's pitchy worrying. Kyo wiped at his bloody nose, an angry displeasure dancing beneath his orange eyes. "His ribs aren't broken. Just a few bruises."

Tohru's small body heaved a sigh of relief, her round features softening. She touched Kyo's still face carefully, hesitantly, her tears not withstanding to the hope of how strong she wished herself to be. Kyo's hands clenched in an ache to hold her as Yuki turned away from the scene and Shigure watched them without a word to ease the atmosphere.

Then, struck into silence from a returned curse, it did not seem so gallant to provide a hopeless lie.

_**-**_**O**_**-**_**O-**

They sat across from each other, the former zodiac rat, and the recently returned ox. Yuki's face was furrowed in contemplation, Haru the sequence breaker as he stared at the ceiling without expression in a bed provided by Kazuma. His dojo was frequented by so much violent brawls, it seemed to useless to have him stay anywhere else.

Yuki watched him quietly, the questions that burned on his lips to ask turning sour as he turned them over and dismissed them as petty. Even without this opportunity, Haru incarcerated to bed for at least three days, he had a feeling as to what the answer held for himself. So when he did raise his voice to question Haru, it was neither a long or choked breath. Simply, "Why?"

Haru turned his head slowly, blinking at Yuki once to discern the fog that had gathered in his gray eyes. The silence between them was deafening, broken suddenly by a childish scream outside the dojo. As if triggered by a snap from his fingers, Haru looked away again. "Rin never told me she was going to die," he said quietly. "I promised I would die with her. Old or young. I would die _for _her if opportunity had shown itself."

Yuki did not move. His eyes strayed to Haru's face, watching as his own fingers clasped the returned black-strung necklace around his neck. He ran his thumb quietly over the simple red stone, then tugged at it so hard it snapped. He held it out to Yuki as if this were an average thing to do, his expression nothing but serene. "She never wore what I made for her." He laughed at the thought, his smooth smile small. "She called it ugly, Yuki." He said this so whiney, a tone so abnormal for him, Yuki nearly laughed with his friend. The necklace coiled into his outstretched palm stole his smile.

"You should probably go. The princess is crying again." He turned away from Yuki onto his side, eliciting a sharp cry from the bed's old springs. Yuki raised his head, then locked his lips shut. He gently pocketed the necklace and stopped at the door. The knob was like ice under his fingers.

"Haru." Without a reply, Yuki knew Haru well enough to be aware that he was listening. "It wasn't anyone's fault. Rin's…"

"Leave," sharply broke past Haru's lips. Yuki went silent, knowing Haru was battling his black side. "Please, Yuki. I don't want to hurt you."

Those final words signaled his departing footsteps. Yuki withheld the shiver that arched up his spine, and down to his toes.

"_Rin's…death wasn't your fault."_

The words he'd wanted to say burned in his throat, yet the necklace had gone cold in his closed fist.

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**Alrighty then. Chapter one is complete, and it's rather short. For some reason I feel like people despise me at the moment for this chapter. I really thought about it for a while, really, I did. Daring to kill off Rin? I feel horrible. I actually do like her despite what the main point of this story revolves around. I do!**

**Hmm. I hit a rather dark note around the end, didn't I? Don't worry though, it gets lighter in the second chapter where Momiji appears. Ah, I can't wait to write about him! He's one of my favorite characters and doesn't get enough love. I might write a story about him as well…later, evil plot bunnies…**

**Lastly, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll try to answer as best I can without giving away important details. I don't want to ruin the story. **

**Reviews make people smile. :D My smile's kind of scary in real life. It's crooked…**


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